Make the Dream Real

El Vez performances present a powerful message of social justice and inclusion in changing US and social contexts. Make the Dream Real interrogates how this message is activated through world-building: the use of a variety of theoretical, theatrical, and musical tactics that bring into being a progressive social space that refutes the current economic, political, social, and cultural configurations of the United States. World-building in an El Vez show makes the dream real by imagining a society in which equal rights are guaranteed, inclusivity is fostered, difference is valued, and the violence of economic inequality is mitigated. But, world-building through performance is not content to reside exclusively in the individual imagination or the social imaginary; it temporarily creates this new social space in actual time and space for the audience to experience. Using a dramaturgical methodology, which marries theoretical inquiry to theatrical practice based on dramaturgical thinking, critical proximity, and intellectual flexibility, the book delves into the theoretical foundations that inform artist Robert Lopez s work, and each chapter analyzes a different performative component he uses. Make the Dream Real interrogates how El Vez s playful engagements hold the United States to its egalitarian promises, voicing and enacting - however fleetingly - a just and richly inclusive social space through performance.